A research paper that looked at brown envelope journalism, popularly called ‘soli’ in Ghana has won the coveted James Markham top paper prize for this year.
The study is the first to systematically measure the brown envelope construct using statistical procedures such as factor and regression analysis, a deviation from previous studies which investigated the phenomenon using qualitative methods.
Titled “Moral foundations and brown envelope journalism among Ghanaian student journalists: An exploratory study”, the paper is also the first to show that brown envelope journalism is a complex construct with more than one dimension.
The researcher, Kwaku Botwe, a journalism lecturer at the National Film and Television Institute, entered the competition when he submitted under the International Communication Division for the 2022 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) research conference slated for Detroit, Michigan in August 2022.
The paper was awarded the prize based on evaluations and accumulated points from blind reviewers. Markham Research Competition Chair, Dr. Vanessa Higgins Joyce wrote in an email “our reviewers were very pleased with your study, and we can’t wait to see your presentation. Congratulations on your outstanding research and scholarship!”. Findings from the research also suggest that student journalists trained at State-founded journalism schools were more likely to accept brown envelopes in kind compared with their counterparts trained at private journalism schools.
The researcher believes that the findings have implications beyond student journalists noting that about a third of the student journalists were also full-time professional journalists.
This is the second time Kwaku Botwe is winning the top paper award in three years. In 2020 he was a recipient of the top paper award with a paper titled “Factors Influencing Nutrition News Reporting among Ghanaian Journalists”.
He is a practicing journalist and one of the lead researchers of the Presidential Encounter Project which ranks journalists based on the quality of questions they ask during presidential press encounters.
He is currently at the University of Colorado Boulder where he is undertaking further studies in Strategic Communication. He is scheduled to present his paper on Thursday, August 4, 2022, while he will receive his award on Friday, August 5, 2022, in Detroit, Michigan.
Source: Ghana/Starrfm.com.gh/103.5FM